Skip to main content
Use case · Operations

Alarm history from WinCC

Read the alarm archives a Siemens WinCC system writes, turn them into a stream, and find out which alarms keep coming back and how long they stay active.

Try it with the quickstartAll use cases
Status heatmap showing alarm states over time
Apache StreamPipes, demo data

The situation

WinCC keeps its alarm history in CSV archives on the SCADA server. The data is there, but reading it means copying files around and writing a parser that survives the circular log rotating underneath it. So the history stays where it is, and questions like "how often did this alarm fire last month" get answered from memory.

The WinCC Alarm Archive adapter reads those files directly, single archive or segmented circular log, and emits one event per alarm. From there it is an ordinary stream: you can count, time, store and chart it like any other data in StreamPipes.

How it works in StreamPipes

  1. 1

    Point the adapter at the archive

    Enter the archive directory, the base name such as Meldungsarchiv, and whether WinCC writes a segmented circular log. Set the timezone of the WinCC host so the TimeString column becomes a correct Unix timestamp.

  2. 2

    Replay without duplicates

    The adapter fingerprints file content, so a segment that WinCC reuses is read again as a new generation while unchanged copies are skipped. An optional delay between replayed events keeps slower consumers from dropping anything during a large backfill.

  3. 3

    Count and time the alarms

    A String Counter counts how often each alarm text appears, a String Timer measures how long an alarm stayed active, and a Task Duration processor tracks the time between state changes.

  4. 4

    Review and share

    Store the alarm events as a dataset. Status heatmaps show when alarms cluster, and a Slack or Teams sink forwards the ones that matter to the people on shift.

What it looks like

Configuration of the WinCC Alarm Archive adapter with archive directory, base name and segmented circular log settings
Archive directory, base name and circular log settings.
Pipeline routing events to notification sinks
Route the alarms that matter to chat and email.
Traffic light chart
Traffic-light charts show the latest alarm state.

Try it on your machine.

One command starts StreamPipes with Docker. The quickstart takes you from there to a first dashboard.

Open the quickstartAll downloads
docker composerelease 0.98.0
mkdir -p streampipes-0.98.0 && cd streampipes-0.98.0 \
  && curl -fsSLO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/apache/streampipes/0.98.0/installer/compose/docker-compose.yml \
  && curl -fsSLO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/apache/streampipes/0.98.0/installer/compose/.env \
  && docker compose up -d